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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to be the first speaker after the maiden contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol. I listened with great interest to his clear affection for his diocese and his comments on poverty which many of us will want to hear more about in the future. It was a very thoughtful speech to which the whole House listened attentively. However, I have to say that the thing about people, apart from their speeches, which always interests me is what is commonly called these days their hinterland. I have taken the precaution of checking with one of the right reverend Prelate’s friends a little about his hinterland, and it is a rich one indeed. I can tell the House that he is an accomplished performer on the electric guitar, which is something we should heed. I can barely accept whether the following is appropriate for this place, but before the right reverend Prelate was ordained, he used to spend some time performing as a stand-up comic. He will have plenty of competition in this House for that one. What I also admire about him is that he is a real sportsman in the sense that at one stage in his career he was a semi-professional footballer and, having been brought up in Manchester, is a lifelong supporter of Manchester United. No one is perfect, of course, but I look forward very much to hearing from him in the future and it has been a pleasure to listen to him today. I shall confine my few minutes in which to speak by talking about an issue that a number of other speakers have already addressed, which is the part of the Queen’s Speech that deals with constitutional reform, particularly reform of the House of Lords as set out in Part 3 of the Constitutional Reform Bill, and the promise of draft legislation on Lords reform. A good deal of time will be saved if I say that without hesitation I agree with everything that was said by my noble friend Lord Rooker. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was about to say much of what was set out by my noble friend. However, I agree with pretty much everything he said, and it is not the first time in the past 35 years that I have been able to say that. I shall confine my remarks to two areas. The first is the question of a draft Bill being published that will provide for a wholly or substantially elected House of Lords. I am well aware that those of us who have doubts about that are described in various ways as opposing change of all sorts, but I do not think that that is either fair or true. Many of us would like to see lots of changes in this place, some of which have already been spelt out by my noble friend Lord Rooker. The real problem, the one the Government simply have not addressed—and if they do not do so then we should be very wary of publishing any form of draft Bill—is the question at the heart of the issue that has bedevilled Lords reform for 100 years. How do you establish a directly elected second Chamber without fundamentally altering the balance of power between the two Houses? The popular way of putting it, at least in my view, is simply to ask the question: how can what is basically a replica of the House of Commons be anything other than a rival to that House? That seems to me to be a bad constitutional structure. The Government have failed completely to answer that question, even though some of my best friends are Members of the Government. The answers to that question are twofold, and I have heard them repeatedly; indeed, I might say ad nauseum. The first response is to say, "Of course we can do it because it is no problem. They do it in other countries". The answer to that is staggeringly simple. Every other country, almost without exception, started with a blank sheet of paper defining the powers of the two Chambers before they were set up. If we were doing that, it would be a doddle, but we are not. We are dealing with a House of Lords which already has very substantial powers—indeed, powers equal to those of the House of Commons in pretty much everything aside from financial matters—but which chooses not to exercise them. If anyone thinks that a democratically elected second Chamber would choose not to exercise its powers, all I can say is that they do not know much about democracy. So I reject entirely comparisons made with countries overseas. The other common explanation for saying, "We can deal with all this" is, "We have the Parliament Act which clearly establishes the primacy of the Commons over the Lords". Again, anyone who knows anything about the daily operation of this House will know that the Parliament Act is irrelevant to its operation. People do not make decisions based on the risk of Bills becoming subject to the Parliament Act; they make day-to-day decisions and assert their rights as an elected House would do. We need far better answers on those questions than we have so far received. Let me repeat the quotation from the Joint Committee that my noble friend Lord Rooker has already given. It states: ""If the Lords acquired an electoral mandate, then in our view their role as the revising chamber, and their relationship with the Commons, would inevitably be called into question … Should any firm proposals come forward to change the composition of the House of Lords, the conventions between the Houses would have to be examined again. What could or should be done about this is outside our remit"." That was the view of a Joint Committee of the two Houses whose recommendations—I think uniquely—were unanimously accepted by both Houses. Until these unanimous recommendations are changed or rejected, it is the duty of the Government and of any future Government to explain how they are going to comply with them. This is of fundamental importance and I ask the Government to ensure that they do so and to promise that any draft legislation will deal with the problem. Having been negative I shall now try to be positive. Part 3 of the Bill on the constitution, in effect, brings into operation a large section of the Private Member’s Bill introduced to this House by the noble Lord, Lord Steel. We owe the noble Lord a debt for bringing forward his proposals, which had widespread support. The Government could have adopted the Private Member’s Bill, but that would have been too simple. However, I have a couple of requests. First, in addition to the obvious things which need to be done and which are included in Part 3, there should be a mechanism to allow people to be expelled or retired from the House. There should also be a mechanism—this will not be universally popular—to allow us to do what applies in most assemblies and certainly in local government. Persistent non-attendance at the House should lead to removal from the House unless there is a perfectly good reason for the non-attendance—for example, on health grounds or because of duties that make it impossible to attend. That would be one way of reducing the numbers and should be included in the Bill. I hope the Government will be willing to introduce it. I should also like to include an additional duty on the list of my noble friend Lord Rooker. This House is wonderfully equipped to fulfil a role that is missing from our constitutional arrangements—that of post-legislative scrutiny. There ought to be a mechanism for discovering five or six years after an Act of Parliament has been passed whether it has fulfilled the objectives for which we spent long hours considering it. That should be done, and could be best done, by this House. I hope that those constructive comments will be considered favourably by the Front Bench. However, the most constructive comment I can make on the overall question of a draft Bill on House of Lords reform is that unless you can get it right, do not bother with it. Not bringing forward a draft Bill would save parliamentary counsel time and it would save the House having to listen to any more speeches like this one from me.